shiv sastry said the following on 10/12/2007 08:13: > In fact many educated Hindus chose this route to avoid being asked to answer > uncomfortable questions about Hinduism. Wearing Hindu symbols like a large > "tilak" on one's forehead or admitting to openly practicing Hindu ritual is > quite often an invitation to being clubbed with "Right wing Hindus".
Shiv: All generalisations are wrong, including this one. I'm an atheist, sometimes militantly so, and I have several friends who are openly religiously Hindu. No one, to my knowledge, has ever suggested that they are right-wing Hindus. On the other hand, I know a few right-wing Hindus who, as far as I know, do not practice Hindu rituals. In fact, they are practically atheists. Their right-wing Hinduism is more driven by a hatred of Muslims than by any religious belief. They are also the ones who tend to go on and on about how ancient Hinduism had the greatest science which was stolen by Max Muller and so on. Like flying machines which flew either on mercury or on mulligatawny soup... But I do not know any "educated" (or otherwise) Hindus who choose to appear atheists or agnosts to avoid being taken for right-wing loons. Right-wing Hinduism is vote-bank politics. It is easy to build up a sense of discrimination based on religion, because people who believe in one illogical thing will often believe in another. It is easy to blame a minority for all your shortcomings. It's far more difficult to build a culture of personal responsibility - the very opposite of a religious society. Ram
